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Pavement ants are not native to New York City, but they are one
of the most common species around. They sailed over here in
ships from Europe more than 100 years ago and flourish in the
stone-slab environments of cities that humans created. They
most often build their nests under bricks and in sidewalk crevices
and will eat everything from sugary foods to dead insects to
flower pollen to human garbage.
Sometimes, pavement ants act like miniature farmers. They
collect seeds from plants and accidentally plant them by burying
them in their nests. They also tend insects called planthoppers
like a rancher tends cattle, “milking” them for a sugary food the
planthoppers produce called honeydew. If a planthopper predator
comes lurking around, pavement ants pick the planthoppers up in
their mouths and carry them down to their nests, where they’ll
wait out the trouble. They also keep interlopers off their property
and will wipe out any upstart fire ant nests that try to pop up on
the homestead. But this is all during peace time.
School of Ants Map - Pavement Ant
North American distribution of the pavement ant. Visit
www.schoolofants.org/species/119 for an interactive version.
Back to spring. The birds are practicing their songs, and you and
I are hopping off the school bus, picking up lucky pennies,
walking our dogs, going to get coffee on our sidewalks that zig
and zag from New York City down to Florida, across Tennessee,
the Dakotas and Wyoming all the way to California. Each day, as
we walk around in our world, the human world of sidewalks that
point us to and from where we want to go, we are also walking
over the world of the pavement ant, with devastating wars,
property disputes, and peace times filled with farming and baby
making. Their world is so similar to ours, so close to us, that we
step over it every day without noticing how unusual it is.
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